Town and Country Sermons | Page 7

saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of
Man be risen again from the dead.
Any one who will consider the gospels, will see that there is a peculiar
calm, a soberness and modesty about them, very different from what

we should have expected to find in them. Speaking, as they do, of the
grandest person who ever trod this earth, of the grandest events which
ever happened upon this earth--of the events, indeed, which settled the
future of this earth for ever,--one would not be surprised at their using
grand words--the grandest they could find. If they had gone off into
beautiful poetry; if they had filled pages with words of astonishment,
admiration, delight; if they had told us their own thoughts and feelings
at the sight of our Lord; if they had given us long and full descriptions
of our Lord's face and figure, even (as forged documents have
pretended to do) to the very colour of his hair, we should have thought
it but natural.
But there is nothing of the kind in either of the four gospels, even when
speaking of the most awful matters. Their words are as quiet and
simple and modest as if they were written of things which might be
seen every day. When they tell of our Lord's crucifixion, for instance,
how easy, natural, harmless, right, as far as we can see, it would have
been to have poured out their own feelings about the most pitiable and
shameful crime ever committed upon earth; to have spoken out all their
own pity, terror, grief, indignation; and to have stirred up ours thereby.
And yet all they say is,--'And they crucified him.' They feel that is
enough. The deed is too dark to talk about. Let it tell its own story to all
human hearts.
So with this account of the Lord's transfiguration. 'And he took Peter,
and James, and John, his brother, up into a high mountain, apart, and
was transfigured before them; and his face did shine as the sun; and his
raiment was white as the light; . . . and while he yet spake a bright
cloud overshadowed them; and, behold, a voice out of the cloud, which
said: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him.'
How soberly, simply, modestly, they tell this strange story. How
differently they might have told it. A man might write whole poems,
whole books of philosophy, about that transfiguration, and yet never
reach the full depth of its beauty and of its meaning. But the evangelists
do not even try to do that. As with the crucifixion, as with all the most
wonderful passages of our Lord's life, they simply say what happened,

and let the story bring its own message home to our hearts.
What may we suppose is the reason of this great stillness and soberness
of the gospels? I believe that it may be explained thus. The men who
wrote them were too much awed by our Lord, to make more words
about him than they absolutely needed.
Our Lord was too utterly beyond them. They felt that they could not
understand him; could not give a worthy picture of him. He was too
noble, too awful, in spite of all his tenderness, for any words of theirs,
however fine. We all know that the holiest things, the deepest feelings,
the most beautiful sights, are those about which we talk least, and least
like to hear others talk. Putting them into words seems impertinent,
profane. No one needs to gild gold, or paint the lily. When we see a
glorious sunset; when we hear the rolling of the thunder-storm; we do
not talk about them; we do not begin to cry, How awful, how
magnificent; we admire them in silence, and let them tell their own
story. Who that ever truly loved his wife talked about his love to her?
Who that ever came to Holy Communion in spirit and in truth, tried to
put into words what he felt as he knelt before Christ's altar? When God
speaks, man had best keep silence.
So it was, I suppose, with the writers of the gospels. They had been in
too grand company for them to speak freely of what they felt there.
They had seen such sights, and heard such words, that they were
inclined to be silent, and think over it all, and only wrote because they
must write. They felt that our Lord, as I say, was utterly beyond them,
too unlike any one whom they had ever met before; too perfect, too
noble, for them to talk about him. So they simply set down his words as
he spoke them, and his works as he did them, as